Using sonar to figure out the timing, I wait until two seconds before they come around the bend between the hills. Praying that everything works in the order I want it to, I hit Charles with a binaural sleep song, wait half a second for him to half-notice, then play back Sharon’s laugh and her “There are so many.” Then I play her laugh again. He turns to look, about a fifth of a second before the invaders come into view. She’s not there, of course, being on his other side, so he has an extra half second of confusion.

The rescue team comes around the corner between the two hills where Sharon and Charles were looking as Charles looks back. As soon as I see him turning back I open up the sound-bomb stun on him, and drop a silencing sound-bubble on Sharon so she can’t sound the alarm. At the 3.2 second mark from when I hit Chuck with the beats, he falls over, asleep.

Between all my concentration, it’s been a bit of a trick to watch what’s going on with the rescue team. Turning my attention that way, it’s the strangest sight. Steve and Miguel have turned their once-boring cart into a roughly triangular, Mad Max style armored dune buggy that’s driving my way at 20 miles per hour. Even more oddly, the other person with them is a young, thin, dark skinned cowgirl with a ten gallon hat. She’s riding a horse, keeping ahead of the dune buggy, and swinging a what?-- is that a lasso?

Fifteen feet above the ground crew, straight out of your grandpa’s Saturday morning cartoons is fucking Hawkman from the DC superfriends. He comes complete with feathered wings, a beaked helmet, and a scary-looking mace. It’s halloween at Comic Con, except this guy is actually flying, and pennies to pizzas, that mace isn’t foam.

The fifth is running next to the buggy, concealed from forward sight. He is one big asian guy. He’s so big I figure he might have been a sumo wrestler, what with the topknot type hairdo, but he’s fully dressed right now, hunched over, and barely fits behind the car. He’s running next to the buggy, at 20 mph, and looks to have been doing that for a while. And--oh shit, better view--he’s got 4 arms. Faraway searing tells me that Priya is a hundred yards back, and heading in as fast as she can, but is there for cleanup, not for being a first target.

On the side of the bad guys, Danny and Chuck are in enforced nap time, but Sharon, Roger and Jerry are topside with us, while I’m assuming Dr. Jones, Svetlana, Phil, and Tim are in the slavers’ hill. If you count me, that’s seven on seven, but I think we have the advantages of surprise and location.

As soon as she notices, Sharon yells and sprints for the slavers’ hill. She’s at least a three times speedster, maybe four. I couldn’t catch her if I wanted to because of the head start. Roger demonstrates that he’s quite the geomancer by raising enough earthworks to stop the car and the horse.

Steve and Miguel vault out of the dune-buggy to get maneuverability but Roger's not fast enough to stop the cowgirl. She makes an impossible throw with her lasso--can ropes turn in midair?--to grab the Jerry who’s already distracted by a duel of airmagic against Hawkman. The rope settles around his arms, and then in half a second, she’s off the horse, the rope is somehow attached to the saddle, and the horse is running away, with him attached to the back. Cowgirl somehow has another rope in her hands, and is starting to swing it.

Goro, because he looks like the guy from Mortal Kombat XIX [pronounced Zix], runs past Charlie, and frees up my sleep control by braining him with a punch. That is one big dude, maybe eight feet tall, with big muscles on those four arms of his.

Hawkman has been freed up from fighting the other aeromancer, and swoops up to free up the rest of my attention so I can help. I can definitively confirm that his now red mace is not just for show as Danny falls off the outside of the hill with a caved-in head.

Even watching all the happenings is hard here. Roger isn’t standing still . Not only has he improved the fortification, keeping Steve and Miguel away from Sharon and the door, but he also manages to slam Goro with a half-ton of Rock, which catapults him 20 yards away from the fight.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Everything looks like it’s going our way, five on two now, until the door opens, sharon runs in and three slavers come out. Svetlana and Phil and Tim come outside.

It looks like five on four; a sonar ping says that the Jerry is either dead or unconscious behind the horse. On the other hand, Priya isn’t a fighter, and Goro hasn’t gotten up yet. I message Priya to let her know where to go first, and switch out my khol for the set of marching toms. Musical support incoming.

I tell Hawkman about the prisoners, their location, and their “Jerry is dead” air pressure problem. He shoots off to that tunnel. None of the rest of us are soldiers, so we can't coordinate for shit. It's all one one one fights. Steve goes up against Svetlana, Miguel faces Phil, Annie Oakley squares off against Roger, and I'm fighting Tim.

I move all my attention to what's going on with me, because Tim, the fucking time-mage, starts moving and he’s faster than I am. Shit. He’s almost twice as fast as me. As he streaks towards me, I only have time to drop my drums, step to the side, and pull out three sticks. Escrima don't fail me now.

I’ve never fought someone faster than me. The first three seconds are testing one another. He fights with eight inch knives, and only has two, while I have three sticks and they're two feet long. I start by setting up a defensive stick pattern that will get him hit if he moves through it. He’s circling and testing, and there's a hundred strikes in fifteen seconds as we focus on one another. I can’t even get a sound-tunnel stun going as he bobs and weaves and circles. We're both trapped here. I can’t let up, because he’s a big danger to anyone else on my team. On the other hand, he can’t take his eyes off me because I’m as much of a danger to anyone else on his team.

In an eighth of a second lull, I remember that sonar has a bunch of advantages. One of them is that it’s effectively super-peripheral vision. I allow myself to look for a split second, and see the battlefield. Steve is down, bleeding from a wooden spear through his shoulder, Miguel is even up against Phil doing all sorts of weird stuff with metals. Goro has started to move again, as Priya leaves him and moves towards Steve. Roger is bleeding from his neck and not moving. Svetlana and Cowgirl are now facing one another and--OW.

Fucking Tim cut my shoulder while I was distracted for an eighth of a second. He cut through my jacket, but only just nicked me. Thank God and Alec for monkey leather jackets.

Turning so the group is behind me, I backpedal to get closer to the rest, while not letting my attention drift from speedmuffin in front of me. Ten seconds, and another two hundred swings later, there’s a lull in my fight. I step back as I shift my attention back to the battlefield again.

Steve is still laying where he was, though without a shoulder-spear. Priya is checking on Miguel, who’s down and maybe unconscious, and Goro is facing Phil. I see the last bit of a fight as Calamity Jane throws her rope like a spear, and it goes through Svetlana’s wood shield, and then through Svetlana’s chest. The scream shakes Phil enough that Goro breathes a fireball at him. Phil dodges, but as he defends against Goro’s fists and fire, our pint-sized roper uses a rope from twenty yards back to somehow club him in the head, and he’s down too.

Somehow, I’ve let myself get distracted by Miss Rope Trick, which fortunately hasn’t been fatal. On the other hand, Tim has a fifty yard head-start going around the hill now, and I’ll never catch him. I turn sonar up to the max, to make sure we won’t be blindsided, pick up my drums, and hurry over to the team.

“There’s two more,” I say. “Probably in the mountain. I’m Snake.” I reach out a hand.

“Danae,” says the cowgirl, tipping her hat.

“Goro Kato,” says Goro, shaking my hand in one of his giant meaty paws, “and the hawk is Carter.”

“Really?”

“It was already my name. I just went with it.”

Priya calls out. “Steve’s dead, Snake. I can’t do anything. Miguel’s unconscious, I have to get him out of here.”

Her ability to handle shock as a doctor is a lot better than mine. I fall-sit down, and point at the prisoner’s hill. She starts dragging Miguels form as I try to figure out her words.

“Snap out of it Snake,” says Goro, “We’ve got company.” He points to the Slavers’ mountain.

I stand back up and see the first zombie.